on the frontier; when General
Ligonier hinted some defence for Annapolis, he replied in his evasive,
lisping hurry, "Annapolis. Oh, yes, Annapolis must be defended--Where is
Annapolis?"

But a more serious impolicy was exhibited in the neglect of American
claims to distinctions and offices. No cabinet seems ever to have
thought of attaching the rising men of the colonies, by a fair and
natural distribution of honours. Excepting a few trifling offices,
scarcely more than menial, under the staff of the British governors, or
commissions in the provincial militia, the promotion of an American was
scarcely ever heard of. The result was natural,--the English blood was
soaked in the American veins; the original spirit of the colonist became
first sullen, and then hostile. It was natural, as the population grew
more numerous; while individual ability found itself thwarted in its
progress, and insulted by the preference of strangers to all the offices
of the country, that the feelings of the people should ponder upon
change. Nothing could be more impolitic than this careless insult, and
nothing more calamitous in its consequences. The intelligent lawyer, the
enterprising merchant, the hardy soldier, and America had them all, grew
bitter against the country of their ancestors. It would scarcely be
believed, that the Episcopal Church was almost wholly abandoned to
weakness, poverty, and unpopularity, and even that no bishop was sent to
superintend the exertions, or sustain the efficacy, or cement the
connexion of the Church in America with the Church in England. The whole
of the united provinces were, by the absurd fiction of a sinecure law,
"in the diocese of London!" Of course, in the first collision, the
Church was swept away like chaff before the wind. An Episcopal Church
has since risen in its room; but it has now no farther connexion with
its predecessor than some occasional civilities offered to its tourist
bishops on presenting their cards at Lambeth, or the rare appearance of
a volume of sermons transmitted to our public libraries.

Another capital fault was committed in the administration of those great
colonies: they had been peopled chiefly by emigrants of the humbler
order. Leaving England chiefly in times of national disturbance, they
had carried with them the seeds of republicanism; but all men love
public honours, and Englishmen love them as much as any others.
Hereditary honours, too, are the most valuable of al